The Soka Kyoiku Gakkai (Value-Creating Education Society) was founded by Tsunesaburo Makiguchi and Josei Toda in Tokyo in 1930. This small group of educators dedicated to educational reform gradually developed into an organization with a broader membership that promoted Nichiren Buddhism as a means to reform not only education but society as a whole. The group came into conflict with the militarist government of the time, which saw education as a means of molding people into servants of the state and imposed State Shinto ideology as a way of justifying its wartime aggression.
During the late 1930s and World War II, members of the Soka Kyoiku Gakkai were subject to increasing police surveillance and harassment, and the organization was effectively crushed. Both Makiguchi and Toda were arrested as “thought criminals” in 1943, and Makiguchi died in prison in 1944. Toda was released from prison in 1945 and rebuilt the organization as today’s Soka Gakkai.